|
|
|
|
|
Nuclear panic won’t do
Going slow on corrupt babus |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Crop damage manageable
The Hazare phenomenon
The wind beneath his wings
From the most celebrated artist of China to someone beaten, condemned and arrested for his ideas, the case of Ai WeiWei raises serious questions about the role of art as a political weapon. Not just for China, but for the world and times we live in.
Art as political threat
|
Nuclear panic won’t do
Haryana
is on the way to setting up two nuclear plants to meet the country’s growing energy requirement. It has already finalised the location of one plant at Gorakhpur village in Fatehabad district. The other plant may come up either at Kitlana in Bhiwani district or at Balsamand in Hisar. This progressive state is the least influenced by the scare-mongering indulged in by the anti-nuclear lobby following the threat posed by the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan or what happened at Chernobyl in Russia a few years ago. This is how a mature nation like India should behave when questions are raised about the risks involved in going in for nuclear energy in a big way. The protests against the proposed Jaitapur (Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra) nuclear power plant is not based on a fair assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of having nuclear plants. A fast growing economy like that of India cannot afford not to use the nuclear power option that has helped countries like France to feel comfortable about how to meet the rising energy demand. Nuclear power is the cleanest source of energy and can be available at an affordable cost over a period of time. India needs to add considerably to its present level of power availability which is possible only for 11 years with the help of our coal reserves. In any case, coal availability will become negligible in 40-50 years, as experts have estimated. India’s hydro-power generation can help to a very limited extent. Solar power cannot be depended upon because of various negative factors, including the unavailability of sunlight on a day-and-night basis. Thus, the situation is such that India will have to develop the capacity to generate enough power from its nuclear plants. It has to arrange nuclear fuel supply on a sustainable basis and acquire the latest technology, which is no longer a problem after the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal. Yes, of course, there should be no compromise on the safety aspect. We must learn the right lessons from Fukushima and Chernobyl. Already the Himalayan region with the highest seismic threat is not on the nuclear power map of India. There is a plan to ensure that the Kalpakkam nuclear complex is 100 per cent safe from a tsunami threat. But India’s nuclear energy programme must be pursued with the same vigour that has been seen in recent years.
|
|
Going slow on corrupt babus
Corruption
has been in the air for quite some time, and now the public revulsion over it is also very much in the air. As is well known, the sarkari functionaries are the fountainhead of this graft, considering that they make it hard for everyone not to follow underhand methods, whether to get their rightful due or to jump the queue. One would think that the government would be keen to weed out these black sheep but quite the contrary happens. Even getting government sanction for prosecuting such people takes far too long. This lacuna has forced the Supreme Court to favour a fixed time frame for governments to grant sanction. It remains to be seen whether the government does rise to the occasion, because so far it has been treating the corrupt with kid gloves. In fact, even the Madhav Menon Committee’s report on CrPC reforms has recommended fast-tracking graft trials. Yet, the Centre came out against inserting in the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) a time limit for criminals, arguing that “it will not help without systemic changes”. No wonder there are several hundred cases which have been pending for over 10 years, while reports of phenomenal corruption have become a daily occurrence, the most eye-popping being the one of an IAS couple in Bhopal, Arvind and Tinu Joshi, who are said to have amassed assets worth Rs 360 crore. According to the data from the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2008, of the 8,554 cases that came up for investigation with state anti-corruption/vigilance departments under the PCA and related IPC sections, only 268 personswere punished by the respective departments and 65 sacked. Compare that with China where in 2010, its war against corruption resulted in as many as 5,000 higher-level government officials – mostly above the county head level – being punished for corruption. Not only that, some 1,44,000 cases of corruption were investigated, leading to penalties for more than 1,46,000 lower-ranking government officials. Any surprise that we are at an abysmal 87th position in Transparency International’s ranking of the most corrupt nations?
|
|
|
Crop damage manageable
Rain
and hailstorm are not uncommon around harvest time. A farmer’s joy at seeing his ripened wheat crop can be cut short any time by inclement weather. A natural calamity is perhaps unavoidable but how it is handled shows how responsive and efficient a government is. There is disappointment almost every time agriculture and 60 per cent of the people dependent on it are faced with a crisis. Food can be better managed if there is political will. It is not clear what prevents the FCI every year from moving grains out of Punjab and Haryana to make space for the new crop? Petty politics is played on the eve of every harvest season. There is a demand for a higher minimum support price and a bonus. The Akali Dal leadership rejects whatever the MSP and the bonus, if granted, every season for wheat as well as paddy. In the familiar game of Centre-bashing the Akali-BJP government fails to do something on its own to help farmers at the receiving end of nature’s fury. Lack of covered space in mandis exposes grains to rain damage. The Punjab and Haryana governments that collect hefty taxes on the sale of food grains do not provide farmers and their produce reasonable shelter. Since large quantities of precious food grains are lost every year due to bad weather, why can’t the Central and state governments join hands to raise the food storage capacity? The manual handling delays grain procurement, causes wastage and raises costs. Why can’t there be a mechanised, bulk handling of food grains? Why are there not enough silos around? Why are food grains not stored in deficit states? Last year the issue of food rotting in rain caught the attention of the Supreme Court, which rapped the negligent government. Yet no lessons have been learnt and the situation is set to repeat this year and in the years to come.
|
|
|
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. — Emily Dickinson
|
The Hazare phenomenon THE Anna Hazare phenomenon is striking on two counts. The immense countrywide enthusiasm it has generated is an indication of how frustrated and dissatisfied the populace is with corruption that reaches the lowest levels of transactions involving authority. Second, it is a warning to the political class cutting across party lines that it is not performing its duty as it should. The ruling party is more culpable because it is in power as a succession of scams has tumbled out of a copious basket of crooked deals. The Manmohan Singh government’s acceptance of Hazare’s terms for ending his fast for public probity in the Gandhian tradition was determined in part by the succession of assembly elections on the political calendar and the chord they struck among diverse sections of people across the country. Interestingly, the apparent civil nature of the first meeting of the committee of government ministers and Hazare’s nominees speaks of caution on both sides. This has not been so as far as Hazare is concerned. At times, he has called for hanging the corrupt reminiscent of kangaroo courts, at other times he has waxed eloquent on the development model of Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, seemingly unmindful of the political minefield he had entered. He was quickly brought to earth by the sharp reaction of some of his great supporters who publicly questioned his judgement. And in an exercise that will call for all the sagacity he and his fellow members representing civil society - itself the subject of controversy — there would be little room for loose talk. BJP leader L.K. Advani as well as other politicians have taken Hazare to task for seemingly challenging the basis of a democratic framework by placing his concept of civil society above the elected representatives, the kingpin of democracy. While Hazare seems to have the vaguest idea of how democracy works, he has the power of using the people’s disenchantment with the calibre of politicians and their ways to make the point that if the democratic system is corrupted by those elected to represent them, where do the people go? The dilemma Hazare represents is that while pointing to the weaknesses of the Indian system in which so-called criminal elements can walk to Parliament and state assemblies with total disregard of their moral responsibilities, there cannot be a separate popular dispensation superseding the checks and balances of the system. In other words, how does one avoid throwing the baby with the bath water? The answer is, of course, to reform the system to plug the loopholes. But that it is easier said than done. It is still too early to tell whether Hazare has compromised himself by his praise of Modi. He would be doing a great disservice to the movement he has launched, exciting the enthusiasm of countless Indians, if he were to be bogged down by his identification with Modi and the party to which the Gujarat Chief Minister belongs; strikingly, Gujarat has not had a Lokpal for years and Modi’s methods of governance, however result- oriented they are, are not a shining example of a democratic framework. Indeed, a worrying point in the controversy — and the despair of some of his ardent supporters — is that there is naivety in his explanation that he had based his praise of Modi on the basis of reports he had read. No one doubts his sincerity, but if Hazare’s opinions are formed by reports he had read, he would invariably commit errors of judgement that would expose him to manipulation, in this instance of self-serving Bharatiya Janata Party manipulation. In a sense, the Hazare phenomenon is reminiscent of Jayaprakash Narayan and the use political parties made of him in the movement in the 1970’s that started with Gujarat and found its rationale in Bihar. The newly-cobbled Janata Party government did not last, and Jayaprakash died a disillusioned man as constituent parties fought over the loaves and fishes of office. While leaders such as Advani have decried the Hazare phenomenon for denigrating politicians, others in the Bharatiya Janata Party have embraced him as a new messiah for partisan profit. Politics is never far from a venture as basic as Hazare’s, and Digvijay Singh’s own foray on his own behalf or that of his Congress party has raised eyebrows as was the circulation of a compact disc allegedly compromising Shanti Bhusan, a member of the panel on Lokpal. The point is that those representing civil society on the panel must safeguard the integrity of the process if it is to emerge as a useful enterprise. Politicians have not covered themselves with glory by their collective guilt in pushing the Lokpal Bill downhill for 42 years, giving the impression that they were more interested in saving their skin than in ensuring the integrity of the system. The inference many have drawn is that after all elections have to be won and how they are won is less important than to secure enough seats to form a government. The jury is still out on whether the present exercise will help make the political process in India more honest and representative of the best interests of the people. One hopes that Hazare will acquire astute men and women who will advise him on the intricacies of the political games that are a staple of governance to enable him to avoid the pitfalls of falling into political traps. Having aroused the conscience of the country on the evils of corruption that is debilitating in India’s quest for economic and political dominance, it would be a great pity if it were to lose steam at the altar of naivety and the manipulation of interested parties. It is up to Hazare to prove the point that he combines his selflessness with a capacity to learn the hard lessons of a predatory political world. I, for one, will keep my fingers
crossed.
|
||||||||||||
The wind beneath his wings The
picture in The Tribune brought a lump in my throat. There was Marshal of the Indian Air Force Arjan Singh DFC, and his two children, having just bid farewell to Teji Arjan Singh, MIAF’s wife and companion for 63 years, and whose soul had soared into the skies on April 15. My mind went back to the time, a decade ago, when I had first visited the Kautilya Road residence of India’s only living Field Marshal. It was Teji who put me at ease, and made me feel relaxed enough to pursue the subject that had brought me to their door. “What will you write about me, there’s not much to write about,” MIAF said when I told him that I wanted to write a book on his life. “Oh! There is much, just let me do it,” I replied. Eventually, he agreed to a series of interviews that laid the foundation of his first biography. The person who helped me even more than him was the gracious and graceful lady, who had chronicled her husband’s journey in life with a thoroughness and meticulousness that showed her love for her man who had swept her off her feet and then made her his life partner. Teji was born on October 22, 1930, in Sargodgha district of Punjab, now in Pakistan. Pretty, young and petite, she was still a student of Convent of Jesus and Mary in Delhi when, in 1943, she fell for the dashing Squadron Leader Arjan Singh who was visiting Delhi and staying in her father’s house. They were married in Delhi, in the Janpath house of Sir Sobha Singh, on February 15, 1948. Twelve Harvard aircraft, flying in the formation “A” and “T” flew over the house in their honour, a gesture authorised by Air Marshal Elmhirst, the then Chief of Air Staff. The couple moved to Ambala Air Force station. Teji recalled how, as the CO’s wife, she was expected to give advice to other wives, who were otherwise elder to her. The next year, Air Commodore Arjan Singh took over as Air Officer Commanding, Operational command and moved to Delhi, where they spent most of their life. That very year their daughter Amrita was born. Her brother Arvind followed three years later, and then came the youngest daughter Asha. Known for her kindness and graciousness, Teji was the perfect host who put visitors at ease as soon as they entered her home, be it the Air House, an ambassadorial residence, a Raj Bhavan or the imposing Kautilya road residence. She was, indeed, the wind beneath the Marshal of the Indian Air Force’s wings, his inspiration, his support. They worked together to achieve their goals. In 2004, MIAF Arjan Singh DFC sold off his farm near Delhi, and entrusted a corpus of Rs 2 crore to the “Marshal of the Air Force & Mrs Arjan Singh Trust” devoted to the welfare of retired Air Force personnel. When Teji asked him why he had put her name on it, he replied: “If you hadn’t agreed, how could I have done
it?”
|
||||||||||||
From the most celebrated artist of China to someone beaten, condemned and arrested for his ideas, the case of Ai WeiWei raises serious questions about the role of art as a political weapon. Not just for China, but for the world and times we live in.
"What could they do to me? Nothing more than banish, kidnap, or imprison me--perhaps they could fabricate my disappearance into thin air--but they don't have any creativity or imagination, and they lack both joy and the ability to fly." Some of the last words seen on Chinese artist, Ai WeiWei's blog before his arrest.
WeiWei
became a force to reckon with for the Chinese authorities, who became nervous about Jasmine rallies reaching the shores of China with Weiwei's international following and the popularity he enjoyed among his people.
Is art creative statement of passive beings, or, is it subversive? Perhaps, none. Art does not come into being in a social and political vacuum. WeiWei, could have continued to produce art of comfort to add to the aesthetic quotient of his country. He had collaborated with the Swiss architect Herzog & de Meuron for the design concept of the now famous Bird's Nest, Beijing National Stadium. Later, he withdrew support on this project as he realised the Olympics were used for political posturing rather than to modernise Chinese society by infusing more democratic rights. As his celebrated works began to make a political comment, trouble began.
Sunflower Seeds (October 2010), a large scale installation at Tate Modern, London, had the sea of 100 million ceramic identical replicas of sunflower seeds scattered on the ground floor of the museum for visitors to walk on and interact with--it was a comment on the culture of mass production in China- of people and of goods. It took 1,600 Chinese artisans from a town called, Jingdezhe--and two years to complete the project. A series of pictures he posted on his blog also overtly expressed his scorn for his government and others, symbolised by the buildings --captured while he is seen giving the finger to the symbolic sites of that particular country in an offensive manner. The sarcasm is unmistakable and if you are as powerful as governments are, you will squirm, masking your helplessness into some heavy-handed action. The mere presence of these pictures unsettled the authorities, the way Charlie Chaplin upset the Fuhrer by his film 'The Great Dictator'.
In 2009 WeiWei was brutally beaten up by the police for addressing the 2008 earthquake corruption issue, in which the government did not disclose exact numbers of the people killed. WeiWei implicated government officials in corruption that resulted in collapse of a school building in which several school children died. WeiWei's artistic CV is as uniquely impressive as are his rebellious musings. During the 80's and early 90's, the now 53 year old artist lived in New York to study art, and was influenced with other artists like Andy Warhol, Alen Ginsberg, and Marcel Duchamp. Like Duchamp, Wei Wei's artistic expression is in the form of Dadaism- making ordinary objects into the unexpected. He never trained as an architect, yet, his prowess in architecture has created inimitable landmarks. On April 3, while he was boarding a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong, WeiWei was arrested. His whereabouts are not known since then, despite the fact that museums such as the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, NY) , the Guggenheim, NY, Tate, London, LACMA (Los Angeles Country Museum of Art) , have all begun to make appeals to the Chinese government for his release. Protesters have started demonstrations in London and Hong Kong, but to no avail. In Hong Kong people made stencils of his picture with caption ' Who is Afraid of Ai WeiWei' across the streets of the city to make a befitting statement for an artist who dared to demand better human rights in China. In an interview to Index On Censorship, U K based leading organisation that promotes freedom of expression, he said, " Totalitarian society creates a huge space that, as we know, is a wasteland. The great success of this system is that it makes the general public afraid of taking responsibility; afraid of taking a position or giving a definite answer; or even of making mistakes." So, WeiWei continued to make 'mistakes' to reassert his statement of demanding accountability from the government of China. From his studio named Fake, he wrote and posted his art works on his blog, which was visited by 4 million people , the only communication tool in his country that would take him to masses. By his arrest, the authorities made their own statement, that even WeiWei could be silenced! The next best thing after failing to control ideas and expressions is to control the source, ideas are coming from.
|
|
Parodying
many clichés around the romantic figure of poet Jaromil, in 'Life is Elsewhere', Milan Kundera, narrates an anecdote where the poet is called to read poetry in a Police Academy. It is a comment on the status of artists, writers and poets in a civilised society. The artist must always seek approval of bureaucracy or aristocracy, whatever be the case. He must conform to their ideology to practice art, or remain inert. The artist can have a license to create ideas, but not ideology. If he fails to do so, his art dies for lack of support and recognition. Or, is viewed as a weapon of destruction, from which the society must be protected. Mere words or pictures acquire the status of nooks. In March 2010, Jafar Panahi, the Iranian film director who won coveted awards at The Cannes, Venice and Berlin Film Festivals for films like The White Baloon, The Circle and Crimson Gold was arrested for being a vocal supporter of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Mousavi. He is believed to be held at an undisclosed location since then on charges not yet disclosed. Jafar was denied permission to be a jury at Berlin Film Festival. The simple, humane statements of his films are viewed as " spreading western propaganda" by the Iranian government. Salman Rushdie, who had to go underground for a decade ( 1989 onwards) after the publication of The Satanic Verses which displeased faith of a few to the extent that it resulted in a fatwa on his head and killing of two of the translators. Rushdie has written extensively with great insight on the subject. Using the metaphor of a whale, inside whose belly a writer can sit and ignore the reality of the world outside, he writes, "…politics and literature, like sport and politics, do mix, are inextricably mixed, and that that mixture has consequences." He later adds in the same essay titled 'Outside The Whale' in Imaginary Homelands," If writers leave the business of making pictures of the world to politicians, it will be one of history's great and most abject abdications." Back home, Safdar Hashmi, an important voice in political theatre was killed in 1989, while performing a street play, Halla Bol. His street theatre group Janam was a strong voice of cultural resistance against authoritarianism. During Ghaziabad municipal elections, at Sahibabad's Jhandapur village, (near Delhi), the troupe was attacked by political hoodlums of the ruling party for speaking out disturbing facts. Hashmi succumbed to his injuries the following day. Two days after his death, his wife Moloyshree Hashmi, went to the same spot again, with Jan Natya Manch troupe and defiantly completed the play. This triggered coming together of the artist community in India who demanded right to free speech and protection for creative expression under Sahmat foundation. Sometimes, the roles are reversed though. When firebrand Trinamool Congree president, Mamata Banerjee picks an artistic brush to aid party fund, buyers end up losing three crore rupees for what they are made to accept as art. It is a different matter that in a state that claims to be high on art and outspokenness, cartoonists and graffiti artists are feeling throttled. "Caution translates into boring and unimaginative graffiti, " says Lahiri, the famous cartoonist from Kolkata, West Bengal. Political conformism has taken away the edge, before drawing every line, now the artists have to think, who all it may 'offend.' "If writers leave the business of making pictures of the world to politicians, it will be one of history's great and most abject abdications." — Salman Rushdie, writer
|
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
The
artist community around the world has expressed its dismay and protest
over the imprisonment of Ai WeiWei. He is an artist of unparalleled
international repute and the Chinese government perhaps has forgotten
that they held him as a beacon of the community when the Olympic
stadium was built. Because an artist questions corruption and speaks
for those who have no voice, the world community must support every
citizen's right for freedom of speech. Countries like ours must move
beyond what policy makers decide is good for "us".
I
have been an admirer of Ai WeiWei's art for more than a decade.
For a long time now he seemed to be too much of a international
name for the Chinese establishment to do much against him and I
have been amazed at his ability to use the very system that he is
fighting against. I think the only way we can continuously evolve
as a truly civilized society is to allow for all voices to be
heard and provide space for negotiation and dialogue. —
Artists
are viewed as dangerous sometimes; Picasso's works were viewed as
anti-war much later, because their statement seeped in rather
slowly. Arpana Caur's sublime works on spiritualism were bought by
museums, not what she painted about the pain of 84 riots. A poet
like Paash, who used words like a sharp edged sword was killed
ruthlessly. When artists and writers come out of the showcase of
art, they are viewed as dangerous. That's why government sends
classical dancers and singers as ambassadors of culture, this
passivity is not our culture.—